


with strings that tie to you

by Talahui



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: 2021 NHL expansion draft, Alternate Universe - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Fusion, Angst with a Happy Ending, Breaking Up & Making Up, Future Fic, M/M, Memory Loss, Post-Break Up, background Nathan MacKinnon/Erik Johnson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-06 20:09:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18395483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talahui/pseuds/Talahui
Summary: an eternal sunshine of the spotless mind au where Tyson loses his boyfriend, loses his memory, and spends the rest of the season searching for a return ticket to the home he's forgotten





	with strings that tie to you

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [alaspooryorick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alaspooryorick/pseuds/alaspooryorick) in the [wesmashing](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/wesmashing) collection. 



> title comes from jon brion's song of the same name from the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind soundtrack.
> 
> I'm showing up to this collection a day late with a case of beer, much like college, but a huge thank you to oflights and emilyisobsessed for once again running an excellent avsfam challenge and to Japery for the wonderful beta and the all important help of filling in the additional cast of characters.
> 
> As always: If you found this by googling your name or the name of someone you know, congratulations on an ao3 account. Let's agree you shouldn't be reading hockey rpf and that this really isn't about you.

Seattle is beautiful in late June, a lot like home if he’s giving it a fair shake. Not home. Victoria, though Gabe had done a  good enough job of ensuring Denver wasn’t home anymore either. The only consolation was that he’d dumped Tyson before they’d visited Seattle together.

The team had put him up in a hotel near the arena as soon as he’d flown in, but there’s only so much room service he can order before it feels like an endless mid-season roadtrip, and most of the guys who are already in town have families and are busy settling in before the school year. They weren’t hiding in a hotel room delaying the inevitable with complimentary breakfasts and house cleaning.

Right after the draft his parents had told him to take the ferry over to the Island, but he’s supposed to be developing chemistry with the new guys and really needs to find a place before his training starts in earnest. Besides, his dad will want to talk about Gabe, and he doesn’t want to explain yet again why the team didn’t protect him and why Gabe doesn’t even want to try to make it work.

Like he needed his dad to confirm all of his fears that when Gabe had said, “We shouldn’t let a long distance thing built around three months of the year keep us from finding something good with someone else,” he had meant he already had. He’d spent enough late nights wondering if the expansion draft had been the clean break Gabe had been waiting for all along.

It isn’t like he wasn’t trying. Tyson had gone out with the team's real estate guy a couple times early on. The places in Wallingford he’d shown Tyson were nice enough--Craftsmans with front porches and perfectly manicured lawns that at least three of his new teammates had already purchased--but they reminded him too much of their place in Denver for him to give them even a passing consideration.

“Have you picked one yet?” Nate asks through a mouthful of cereal. He’s been obsessed with Tyson’s house hunt, sending links to houses on Redfin in his spare time like he has nothing better to do in the off-season. Which. His only neighbor is Sid so maybe.

Tyson shrugs and props his phone against the towel rack so he can still see Nate while he’s brushing his teeth. Say what you want about hotel living, but the convenience of the in-bathroom towel rack cannot be overstated.

“Bro,” Nate says, exasperated. “You can’t stay in the hotel forever. It’s depressing AF. Do I have to hold your hand the entire fucking way? Because I will fly out there if I have to.”

It takes another two weeks of Tyson pretending he’s looking for a place before Nate has to swoop in with the hand holding, and he huffs his way through the entire drive between the airport and hotel like this wasn’t an excuse to get out of EJ’s Horse Hunt 2021. Tucked in his bag is a binder with printouts of three dozen places organized by neighborhood that he pulls out before Tyson has even opened the door.

“Duuude,” Tyson lands the last syllable hard, pushing Nate away with both hands when he tries to show him the first place. “What the hell is wrong with you? At least hug me first. Jesus.”

Nate grins, then pulls him into a hug that pops his back in at least three different spots. Tyson lifts his feet so Nate has to hold his whole weight, and it knocks him off balance enough that they tumble into a heap on the spare bed. Nate hooks a leg over Tyson’s, and for a second he thinks Nate’s going to try to flip him, but he just tips his head until their foreheads are touching. They’re so close Tyson can see every pore of his face.

“You’ve really gotta up your skincare routine,” Tyson says. “It’s looking pretty rough over there.”

“Bite me,” Nate says, and his hand is covering Tyson’s face and shoving him away playfully before he can react. He tries to bite at the meat of Nate’s hand anyways but loses his advantage and ends up rolling off the side of the bed. He probably doesn’t want another hotel room mishap to add to the injury list, especially when he has to prove himself to an entirely new team.

“If EJ isn’t able to satisfy all of your needs, I’m always here for you,” Tyson offers sweetly from the floor.

The bed creaks as Nate rolls over to look down at him and smiles back just as sweetly. “EJ bites me just fine, thank you.”

“Gross, how?” Tyson shudders, and it’s not real, but it still manages to pull outrage from Nate after years of the same joke. “Never mind. I regret asking.” God. EJ would use his dentures for purely sex reasons.

This is familiar ground, and if they’re both trying a bit too hard at least they’re trying. The delay brought by distance is bound to catch up eventually.

 

Nate drags him to four different houses that Tyson flat out refuses to get out of the car to look at before he gives up. “Dude, this place is great. It has heated floors so you don’t even have to wear your ugly ass bear slippers in the winter.” He sounds preternaturally happy about it, but Tyson can see through the hype.

“Not interested,” Tyson says for at least the sixteenth time since Nate’s shown up. The window treatments had been too similar to their Denver place at the last one. Gabe would have hated the pretentious front pillars here.

Nate groans. “Come  **on** .”

“No, thanks, Nathan,” Tyson says tightly. He doesn’t even wait for Nate to buckle up before throwing his car in reverse and pulling out of the driveway faster than the Neighborhood Association would probably like. Might as well burn his bridges on the way out.

“Will you take this seriously if I buy you a Blizzard?” Nate asks, already pulling up directions on his phone to the closest Dairy Queen.

“I am taking this seriously,” Tyson snaps. “I just don’t see the point in buying a house when they’re just gonna trade me anyway.” Which, oops.

“They’re not gonna trade you,” Nate says, and he’s not even trying to sound patient at this point. “They already said they want you to stay.”

“Yeah, well. It’s not like I haven’t heard that before.”

Tyson can feel Nate looking at him, but he stares straight ahead, focusing on Siri telling him where to turn next. He’s already had his fill of Nate looking sorry for him, thanks.

“Tys,” Nate says. It comes out too soft, like Tyson has to be handled with care, and isn’t that embarrassing. “It sucks, okay. I get it.”

“How would you know?” Tyson scoffs. “Like the Avs are ever gonna trade your contract.”

“They traded Gretzky,” Nate says, mostly to be an asshole.

“Did Gretzky have a super hot boyfriend who also dumped him as soon as the trade hit? I didn’t think so, but maybe I can give him a call and check since you’d need a super hot boyfriend to relate, and you don’t.”

“Fuck you, EJ is hot,” Nate throws a receipt from the last time Tyson had gotten DQ at Tyson’s head, and it bounces off his ear and onto the floor.

“Literally only you think so.”

“You have clearly not been on the internet,” Nate snaps back.

Tyson grimaces. “Yikes. No thanks. I don’t want to know what the freaks on the internet have to say about your boyfriend.”

 

Nate unceremoniously dumps the two large Blizzards onto the dual entertainment center and dresser as soon as they make it back to the hotel like he already knows Tyson is going to steal at least half of his. History says he’s not wrong, even if it is mostly out of spite at this point.

“Well…” he prompts, and Tyson doesn't know how to explain that he looked at the front door of every house they went to and remembered how he and Gabe had argued over the Dutch door and whether or not they should paint it or leave it natural, how he thought about how he and Gabe would maneuver around each other in every kitchen the real estate agent had shown him, how he measured each house by how much Gabe would hate the lack of porch or the view or that one of them would have to park on the street since the garage was too small. At least in the hotel Gabe doesn’t haunt the rooms like a ghost. 

_ I have a house _ , he wants to say but doesn't. “Do you ever think I'll pull my shit together enough to get over Gabe?” he does say, which is worse.

Nate frowns, his entire face scrunching towards his forehead, and he looks close to saying something entirely too sympathetic, so Tyson adds, “Like, do you ever think about how Sid’s so impossibly out of your league that it’s absurd to stop wanting him?”

It’s unfair to bring up Nate’s crush on Sid since Nate had been twelve at the time, and any remnants of the crush were entirely based on nostalgia, but the point still stood.

“Yeah, well, I did,” Nate points out, uncapping one of the Blizzards and handing it to Tyson with a spoon. “And who says Sid’s out of my league?”

Tyson takes a huge bite, going straight for the brain freeze like always, and says through a mouthful of Oreo hot cocoa, “Bro, we’re all in the NHL, but Sid’s out of all of our leagues.”

Nate doesn’t look convinced. “Yeah, whatever, but Gabe is definitely in our league. Only he sucks and you’re gonna meet someone way better who’s not an asshat.”

“What if I’ve peaked?” Tyson plows on. His Blizzard is not helping. He tosses it in the garbage can, still half full and already teetering dangerously close to the edge of liquid. He starfishes onto the bed and tries to channel his inner ice cream by melting into the mattress. “What if Gabe was the top of my relationship mountain and the rest of my life is a freefall down the other side. Even if I manage not to hit any trees a yeti’s still gonna eat me at the end.”

“I’m too young for that reference,” Nate says, fishing the Blizzard out of the trash and putting it into the mini fridge’s freezer. Nate’s the best. Both Tyson and house cleaning would have regretted that later. “But even I know that’s just post-break up wallowing. ”

Tyson rolls onto his side so that Nate can scoot in beside him and lets Nate adjust his limbs until their bodies are aligned. Maybe this shitty feeling is what his life is gonna feel like from now on. He’ll pull his shit together and rent an apartment so that Nate stops worrying that he’s falling apart. He’ll play hockey, live for the three games a year when he gets to see his best friend in person, and hope those games aren’t ruined by a terrible loss or an injury or sharing the same space with the unfortunate love of his sorry life.

“The best is yet to come,” Tyson says and doesn’t believe.

“Yeah,” Nate agrees, a warm puff of air against the back of Tyson’s neck. He wraps his arms more tightly around Tyson’s chest and squeezes like he’s afraid Tyson will disappear if he holds him too loosely. 

Tyson isn't ready for Nate to leave. He still has a week left in Seattle, but every minute feels like a constant countdown to the end of his trip. Even here, as close as two bodies could be, Nate was always on the verge of leaving.

Unsurprisingly, the team has the name for a good moving company, along with everything else, and they manage to get everything in and set up before he’s even back from the first team skate of the pre-season. There wasn’t much to bring: a few boxes of clothes and shoes, his gear. A couple of last year’s rookies had been living in his Denver house and had asked to stay, so he hadn’t worried about packing up any of that stuff when he'd shipped everything he thought he'd need for the season. He hadn’t lived there in so long, it wasn’t like he’d miss any of it anyways. 

And everything in his old place was really Gabe’s. All Tyson had brought with him when they had officially moved in together had fit in his side of the closet. 

When he’d moved in with Gabe. 

The semantics only seem important now: Gabe’s house, Gabe’s stuff, Gabe’s home. Tyson had been a long term tenant who’d talked himself into believing he was something more than that. He was always talking himself into believing he held a more important place in people’s lives than he actually did.

Even before they got together Tyson had been embarrassing about Gabe, but he’d only gotten worse after, always three steps ahead, never quite living in the moment because there was the future to think about. At first it had been little things--telling their sisters, meeting each other’s families as boyfriends, their first Christmas together--but he didn’t stop there. He’d talk to Nate about whether he and Gabe should move into his house or Gabe’s (Gabe’s, which had clearly been a mistake), if Nate thought Gabe would want to retire in Sweden (probably not full time, right?), what they should name their kids (definitely not Olaf, everyone has seen that movie, Tyson), if it was too soon to say ‘I love you’ (definitely, but he had done it anyways). Nate used to give him so much shit for it, but he was just as much of a hopeless romantic as Tyson, so Tyson knew that deep down Nate thought it was soft as fuck.

From the start, he’d known he could only be serious about Gabe, that it was a forever kind of love. He wishes he’d been wrong. Forever love hurt like hell when you were the only one in it.

 

Nate Skypes a month into the season after Seattle barely scrapes out a win over the Canucks. The rivalry is fierce already, so the win feels especially gratifying even if Tyson’s own play was less than he’d hoped it would be by now. While the rest of the team has found some semblance of chemistry, he’s still lagging just a breath behind. He’s still thinking about the pass he’d made to Hyms that had resulted in a goal for Vancouver and temporarily tied them in the second when Nate’s face pops up on his screen.

He’s already in bed, hair fluffy from letting it air dry after practice, and Tyson can see EJ’s arm poking out of the corner of the video. The Avs are having a great season, and that rankles. The least they could do was play like they missed him even a little.

“Hey, buddy, good game,” Nate says, stifling a yawn in his bare shoulder. “Nice assist in the first.”

“Even better turnover in the second, eh?” Tyson tries to joke, but dunking on himself doesn’t feel any better than when the professionals do it behind a paywall.

Nate scrubs his hand across the faint five o’clock shadow at his jaw and sighs. Being Tyson’s friend has taken a lot lately, and Nate, who has done the heavy lifting for years, has just about reached his tired of Tyson’s bullshit threshold. He hasn’t said anything, but Tyson can tell. He’s over it too. 

“We beat the Habs last night,” Nate offers. He’d have said something reassuring before, but then it would have been a thing, and Tyson wouldn’t have been able to drop it. He’s gotten so bad that no one’s accepting invitations to his pity parties any more. “Did you see Mikko’s beauty goal from the blue line? It’s gonna be a highlight reel goal this season for sure. Gabe dumped a water bottle over his head when he got back to the bench.”

Gabe’s name hits him like a blow to the solar plexus. Everyone says it’s supposed to get better over time, but that sounds like bullshit when it still leaves him winded months later. “If you’re gonna keep talking about him then maybe you should stop calling.”

Nate’s face shutters, but he drops it, let’s Tyson give him a cribs tour of the apartment, and doesn’t say anything about how most of the cupboards are empty or how the few pieces of furniture he’d ordered don’t help it look any less barren. EJ has no compunction when he leans against Nate to catch a glimpse of the tv Holts had helped him hook up last week. “What the fuck, Barrie. Did you decide to eschew worldly possessions for the sake of your soul? Because it’s ugly as hell.”

“I was inspired by your face,” Tyson snaps back. “The fewer the teeth, the closer to God. Minimalism at its best.” It’s not one of his best chirps, but EJ doesn’t deserve his A-game anyways.

 

When Veebs bought Tyson a sun lamp after the expansion draft, he’d rolled his eyes--it’s not like he’s never lived in the Pacific Northwest--but by the end of November  they’ve had a grand total of one sunny day since the start of the season and he’s taken to sitting by the lamp for long stretches in the grey early mornings in order to even drag himself to the practice rink. He can’t tell if it’s the season, nothing like the Golden Knights’ triumphant entrance into the league, or winter that drags, but it feels worse than the 22 wins they’d scraped together during the Bad Season. There’s no Nate on the ice to slam him into the boards in celebration or Gabe at home to blanket him with his body and whisper, “I’ve never been happier,” into his neck. 

They’d just lost in Sweden for the second time in a row and Gabe had still said it. 

But the Avs are at the top of the leaderboards in the Western conference, so he’s probably happier now.

It’s no surprise when they choke in the third and give the Avs their second win of the West Coast roadie. He’d hoped for a better showing his first game against them, but all the hype about the reunion had gotten into his head. It was an entire season of frequently fraught returns for the entire team. Playing in the last arena and making it through the final tribute video would be a relief for all of them.

Nate knows better than to try talking to him before the game, but that doesn’t stop some of the other guys from skating over for a brief helmet tap before getting back to warm ups. Gabe doesn’t try. He’s not sure if it would have been worse if he’d made the attempt or not.

“Any plans with the boys?” P.K. asks after the game, smiling more than the 2-5 score should allow as he loops a towel over his shoulders. Tyson’s supposed to take Nate out, but he’s feeling even less charitable than usual after his terrible play and the excruciating post-game interview he’d had to give, so he’d already texted Nate to cancel. He shrugs noncommittally, and pulls a hoody on over the team t-shirt. The guys are mostly used to that from him by now.

It’s not really a surprise when Nate’s waiting for him outside the locker room when he finally gets out. “Did you get my text?”

“I got it,” Nate rolls his eyes and slings Tyson’s bag over his shoulder. “Where are you parked? Curfew’s in three hours.”

“C’mon, man, we just lost.” Tyson sounds whiny even to his own ears as he trails behind Nate. His keys are in that bag. “I’m gonna be shitty company.”

Nate keeps walking even though there’s no way he knows where player parking is. “Yeah.” The  _ duh _ is implied.

That stops Tyson dead. The last few months have been terrible, but he’s done his best to shield Nate from the worst of it. He’s sucked it up and gotten an apartment and says yes to teammates who invite him out often enough that he has something to tell Nate whenever he asks. “Fine,” Tyson huffs and hurries to catch up.

They build a giant nest in Tyson’s living room by stacking all of the pillows from his couch and bedroom onto the hardwood floor, then roll themselves into burritos in front of the tv. There’s an infomercial on for a portable sauna that turns into one for a local tattoo removal clinic that eventually becomes an advertisement for Lacuna Inc., a company that promises they can erase memories overnight. A bad break up. A former friend. An estranged parent. Gone in the time it takes to get a good night’s sleep.

“Don’t forget,” the doctor on screen assures. “With Lacuna Inc., you CAN forget.”

The screen flashes, and the man starts to fade from the screen until he’s completely disappeared. A Seattle number pops up in his place.

“Jesus,” Nate whispers. “Imagine getting someone that important completed wiped from your memories.”

Tyson does imagine it. He imagines not having anyone to grieve over, not thinking about which restaurants he would have taken Gabe to when their schedules overlapped every time he went out to eat with one of his teammates, not wondering if there was something he could have done differently so that Gabe would have loved him enough to keep trying. He’d have so much room for other people, for his new teammates. He’d get his hockey back. Seattle could actually be the hopeful new start Joe had offered him when he found out they weren’t going to protect him.

He covertly snaps a photo of Lacuna’s contact information, only half listening to Nate monologue.

It’s only an idea in the back of his mind for several weeks before he finally calls and makes an appointment. Seattle’s Bye Week overlaps with the All-Star Game this year, and he knows he won’t have to worry about being invited after the season he’s been having, so he schedules the procedure for that Monday and calls Nate to let him know.

“That’s not funny, Tys,” Nate says, and he sounds a little scared. That’s irritating more than anything.

“Who’s joking?” Tyson opens his arms to encapsulate his sorry apartment. He had nothing to show for his time here. “My life has been shit for six months. Maybe erasing Gabe can cure my fucking depression.” 

It’s harsher than he wants it to be, but it’s the truth. Coming to Seattle had meant losing all sorts of things: his best friend, his team, his city. That would have been bad enough. But Gabe had stopped wanting to love him, and that was so much worse than an exile to the Emerald City. If he got rid of that, maybe the other parts wouldn’t hurt as much.

“Are you sure it’s not just the rain?” he asks. “You haven’t seen the sun since like October. That depresses anyone.”

“It’s not just the rain,” Tyson says.

“Because we can go somewhere sunny for the All-Star Break. You know you fucking love Hawai’i.”

“Nate--” Tyson tries, but Nate cuts him off.

“And they’ve got pills for if you’re like really depressed, y’know? You don’t have to whiteout your brain to be better.”

Nate argues for a good twenty minutes, first bargaining and then anger. Tyson lets him. Once Nate gets going he’s hard to stop, and it's better to wait for him to lose steam or fall over before offering him an alternative.

Eventually the decibel lowers and Tyson’s able to bring the volume back up to normal. This time, Nate’s almost too quiet when he asks, “Aren’t I worth keeping?”

“I’m not erasing you,” Tyson assures him. “I’ll still remember being an Av, still remember you’re my Dogg. The future just won’t hurt any more.”

Nate flies out over his Bye Week and helps Tyson cull every Gabe related item from his apartment so there isn’t anything that might try to jog a memory that isn’t there any more. 

The apartment is silent as Nate goes through Tyson’s instagram and camera roll to purge the photos Tyson hadn’t been able to bring himself to delete after the initial break up. He’s still mad, but he also gave up an entire week of doing filthy things to his boyfriend, which Tyson had had the displeasure of hearing about in such excruciating detail he’d finally stopped picking up when EJ called, so Tyson is probably mostly forgiven even if Nate is dragging it out.

They spend the afternoon cooking meals for the rest of the week just in case the procedure isn’t quite as non-invasive as advertised. Mary from the Seattle satellite office had assured him that he’d be fine when he woke up, a little confused perhaps, but nothing that couldn’t be explained by a bad hangover. Nate had insisted they plan for the worst anyways.  _ Plan for the worst _ was Nate’s motto for the entire process, and he’d shown up like he expected Tyson to emerge traumatized like a secondary character in a dystopian novel. 

Once Tyson’s refrigerator is carefully lined with enough lunches and dinners to last him until the team starts their road trip next week, Nate disappears into the guest room while Tyson finishes washing the dishes leftover in his sink. He moves on to putting away the ones sitting in the drying rack while he waits. Maybe he’ll wake up tomorrow not only forgetting Gabe but thinking he’s good at cleaning his house. Gabe had always had to remind him to empty the dishwasher or put his dirty clothes in the hamper  _ It’s literally two feet away, Tys, come on _ . No Gabe meant a clean slate for all sorts of things.

By the time he’s wiped every countertop down with bleach, he’s starting to think Nate’s not coming back, so he rinses the sponge and washes his hands, then goes to hunt Nate down. It’s not like his place leaves many options for hiding.

He finds Nate in his bedroom, hunched over a book and scribbling furiously, his lips curved slightly down in concentration like when he’s a hundred signatures deep at a signing. The bed bows a little as Tyson sinks down beside him, and they both tilt closer to each other to meet in the middle.

“Hey,” Tyson says, bumping their shoulders. It lands closer to Nate’s bicep, but he leans in to meet Tyson, which is more of an acknowledgement than anything else he’s gotten from Nate all day.

“This is for you.” Nate shoves the book into his hands and crosses his arms across his chest defensively. “It’s about us and the team.” He shrugs, studiously casual. “In case you forget.”

“I’m not gonna forget,” Tyson says. Has been saying. He doesn’t understand how else he can assure Nate that nothing about them is going to change.

“You don’t know that,” and anything casual about Nate’s posture is gone. He stands, and it feels like he’s looming even from feet away. “You’ve never been an Av without Gabe. You’ve never known me outside of knowing him. How much of our friendship happened with Gabe sitting on the other side of the table? And what about every time you talked about him or thought about him when we were hanging out. Fuck. You're probably not gonna remember anything about the entire season leading up to getting with him. You were so obsessed.”

Everything about Nate’s body language screams for space, so Tyson opens the album and starts looking through the pages until Nate’s ready for him again. The care Nate took is obvious: pictures that he’d clearly gotten from the Avalanche media and off the guys’ private social media accounts and had printed, stories to go with written along the margins. He’d been sure not to include Gabe even in the background. Not a shoulder. Not the back of a golden head. Not even a stray 92. He feels conspicuously absent. It’s weird to think he won’t tomorrow.

They’d agreed on a story at the pre-appointment Nate had take him to yesterday. It was impossible to cut Gabe out completely without him noticing. They still played in the NHL. There was no way to send every person tangentially related to their careers a note requesting they not mention Gabe to him again without creating an entirely different kind of scandal, so the team had agreed to give him an in-practice concussion to explain away anything he noticed was missing.

Nate had sat through the entire session ramrod straight, asking a million questions that Dr. Mierzwiak never seemed to answer in a way that Nate found satisfying, but he’d accepted the care sheet and assured the doctor he’d look after Tyson.

“Everything’s gonna be fine, bud,” Tyson promises. “Tomorrow morning you’re gonna have your best friend back.”

 

Tyson wakes up to the smell of coffee. He doesn’t remember scheduling it to run--hasn’t figured out how to program his new machine--but maybe he’d gone a little hard last night in celebration of the break and his drunken brain had made a connection his sober one hadn’t. That would explain why his brain felt like it had been dropped down a well and was trying to send messages through water. Apparently, avoiding alcohol all season hadn’t done him any favors last night.

When he drags himself out of bed and into the kitchen, the refrigerator is open and a blonde with wide shoulders is digging through the drawers. If he forgot picking up this guy, then he must have really overestimated his ability to hold his beer.

The guy turns around, and it takes him a second before, “Hey, shouldn’t you be in Colorado?”

The man is familiar but fuzzy. Something warm in his chest that feels a whole lot like affection springs to life at the sight of him. It takes a few beats more before the pieces lock into place. Nate. Best friend. Dance parties in Factor’s basement. Carpooling to the rink every game day and practice despite Nate’s terrible playlist selection. Wingmanning while Nate fumbled his way through a casual flirtation.

Nate looks out of place in this kitchen, his vulnerable bare feet curled against the cool tile like he expects it to be warmer. Had Tyson known he was coming, he’d have set an alarm or ordered in breakfast. His best friend can only come to his new place for the first time once.

Nate’s mouth does something Tyson can’t quite name, his eyebrows tilting in towards the bridge of his nose. “You asked me to come, remember?”

Tyson strains for last night, his head aching, but there’s nothing there. The pounding in his brain reverberates through his toes. He should probably sit down--

\--and Nate’s already there, pushing a stool behind Tyson as his knees buckle. “Shit,” Tyson groans, hiding his head in his hands for the extra darkness. He hears the sink running, and a moment later feels the cool press of a wet rag on the back of his neck.

“They said the concussion wasn’t bad but…” Nate’s voice falters like it does when he’s lying, like maybe it’s worse than he’s letting on. Tyson was always a baby about injuries. Nate had always swaddled him in affection and hope until the reality caught up with Tyson’s demands to be well. No wonder he’d asked him to come.

“I don’t remember,” Tyson says, and that definitely seems worse than Nate’s letting on. “I don’t remember,” he repeats, panicked. He tries to push himself up from the counter, but the world spins before he makes it to his feet.

“They said it might be like that for awhile.” Nate crouches down to eye level and slides a glass of water and two ibuprofen in front of him just like the early days when they’d stay at Factor’s while all of the older guys went out and Nate would take care of him in the morning because, older or not, Tyson couldn’t hold his liquor.

He goes back to bed and mostly stays there. Despite his best efforts, they only leave the house once over the couple days Nate’s in Seattle. It’s a lousy first trip to Tyson’s new city, but everything about Nate leaves his mind straining for something just out of reach.

During the few hours Tyson is feeling like himself, Nate asks Tyson to take him to his favorite place. They pull on fleece jackets and their shoes and are already out the door before Tyson realizes he can’t think of a single place he likes going to. They keep walking to the parking garage while Tyson racks his brain for literally any place he even likes. Google maps-ing the closest restaurant would be pathetic, and Nate already has a perpetually concerned tilt to his eyes when he’s looking at Tyson without knowing the concussion is still messing with his memory.

Then it hits him. The guys are always going on about a burger place in Fremont that he keeps meaning to try, so he punches in the address and tosses the keys to Nate. “You drive.” Better not to risk it.

Later that night, after a migraine postponing nap, he finds Nate whispering rapidly to someone Tyson can’t make out on Skype. When he notices Tyson, he switches to audio and turns off the speaker so that Tyson can only hear his side of the conversation. He listens for a few more seconds, then says, “Hey, Tys is up, so I’m gonna go, but I’ll tell you all about it when I get home, okay?”

Whoever is on the other line must agree because a minute later Nate’s smiling softly in a way Tyson hasn’t seen the entire trip. “Yeah, I know,” he says before hanging up.

Tyson wanders over and plops down beside Nate on the couch. “Who was it?”

“Just EJ checking in on me,” Nate says.

Tyson pictures EJ. Long legs. Strong jawline. Fewer teeth than expected, but just enough to work in his favor. The headache he’d been avoiding with sleep presses in at the corners of his eyes. ‘Why would he check up on you? Shouldn’t he be seeing how the invalid is doing?”

Nate smiles, and there’s that soft look again. “That’s what boyfriends do I guess.”

And, oh right. Tyson guesses he knew that.

 

A few days after Nate leaves, the worst of the headaches stop, and so does the constant sense of missing something. It’s not Nate’s fault, but it’s still a relief not to feel three steps behind in every conversation. It’s half-heartedly raining on the last day of the Bye, but Tyson pulls on a pair of waterproof boots to brave the early February drizzle, and walks the three blocks to a coffee shop he’s been meaning to try for months. He shoots a photo of the drink board to the group chat while he waits for his coffee.

_ Need company? _ Oskar texts.

Like he even needs to ask. Tyson always wants company. The built in friends was something he had missed when he moved to Seattle. No Nate to carpool with to the rink. No Dutchy to mock for his locker room music taste. No Talbo to host movie nights or trick him and Nate into babysitting.

_ You gonna buy me a cronut? _ he sends back.

A second later, he gets,  _ That the price of your friendship? _

_ I’m a cheap date. _

He feels stupid as soon as he sends it, but there’s no taking it back, and Oskar has known him long enough to have gotten used to him by now anyways.

When Oskar finally shows up, he refuses to buy Tyson a cronut for meal plan purposes, but he does get him a paleo pumpkin chocolate chip muffin, which will work if it has to. He doesn’t have to like it, though.

“Lindy.” He pokes at the muffin dubiously. “This is not the correct price for my friendship.”

Oskar slides into the chair beside Tyson’s and hands him a second coffee. “Things are looking up, so no slouching on the meal plan.”

Things do start to look up over the following weeks. There’s no way they’ll catch up after the deficit they dug in the first half of the season, but they’re all playing better together, and everyone keeps telling him he’s a big part of that. His hockey is back, the muscle memory if not all of the memories of learning to begin with. Sometimes he wonders how much more the concussion might have affected him than he originally realized, but he doesn’t ask too many questions. There’s no point getting benched for something he’s probably better off not knowing about.

He goes out with the guys after games and explores the city on his off days. It might have taken seven months, but Seattle finally starts slotting into place.

“You seem different,” Jason says one night after all the other guys have cleared out of Tyson’s apartment. Tyson’s not quite sure how to take that from a guy who had showed up to his hotel room at Worlds with a deck of cards and a sequin cowboy hat and introduced himself as “Daddy,” and the uncertainty must show, because Jason is quick to add, “Not in a bad way just…” he shoves his hands in his pockets and shrugs. “I’m glad you figured it out.”

He’s maybe a little pushy about getting Jason out the door after that, but who says that and just leaves it hanging there for Tyson to get anxiety over? 

Nate picks up on the fourth ring, and for a second Tyson thinks he’s just going to let him go to voicemail, but Nate doesn’t do that to him even when he’s pissed, and Tyson hasn’t done anything lately to warrant that anyways.

“What’s up, buddy?” he asks behind a yawn.

“Am I different?”

Nate snorts, and Tyson can hear someone shifting in bed in the background. “It’s too late for me to deal with an existential crisis right now, Tys.”

“Just hang up,” a muffled voice that must be EJ mutters.

Fuck EJ. He’s taking down every picture of that asshole he has hanging in his house.

“I’m serious,” Tyson insists. “Demers says I’m different. What the fuck does that even mean?”

“Tys,” Nate sighs, and he hears the springs creak as Nate pulls himself out of bed. “Just give me a sec, babe,” he adds to EJ just loudly enough for Tyson to catch. A door clicks shut, then Nate says, “You are different.”

“Do you think it’s the concussion?” That’s a scarier prospect than it has been before. There were things he was willing to forget to play hockey, but as a kid he’d decided hockey was never going to be everything for him. If sitting out games and getting treatment gave him back himself, it would be worth it.

Nate doesn’t say anything for a few beats.

“What?” Tyson demands. This is not the time for Nate to be hesitant.

“When I came up…” Nate stalls, starts again. “You were miserable, and all you wanted was to get rid of the sadness, so you found a doctor who said he’d make you better.”

The room stills. He hears Nate breathing into his phone and his own blood rushing from his heart to his lungs, ringing in his ears. This wasn’t an accident. He’d done it to himself.

“Are you there?” Nate’s voice is almost too quiet like he’s unsure which answer would be better.

“Yeah,” Tyson croaks. He feels too present. He wants to sink into something and feel a little less there for a minute.

“Are you still sad?”

Tyson wants to say yes. This is sad, right? He’s different than he was before; he knows there were games and practices where he perfected his slapshot, but every time he starts to piece together where it came from someone swoops in from the periphery of his memory and it collapses around him. There’s the goal that made him the highest scoring defenseman in franchise history and then black where the next moment should be. He knows he loves Nate, feels it in his bones, but he can’t remember even half the stories Nate tells him and picks up even fewer of the in jokes. 

Only he doesn’t feel sad, just distant, like the person those things happened to was someone else, so he says, “No,” and means it.

“I guess it worked then.” Nate doesn’t stay on the line for much longer after that.

 

They play the Rangers in February, and Claesson gets a game misconduct for charging him into the boards. He and Claesson are both shouting as he pulls himself back up, and it takes him a minute to realize they’re both yelling in Swedish. 

“Since when do you speak Swedish?” Oskar asks when he finally skates back to the bench. 

Tyson shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

But it’s fine. Better than fine.

Better than sad.

 

By the time it’s his turn to be welcomed back to Denver, he hasn’t forgotten what Nate had said, but he’s pressed on. There’s no time to think about what it could mean. So he tells himself he’s better and leaves it at that.

“You gonna cry during your video?” P.K. bullies him towards the front of the plane, forcing him to the front. That had been one of the traditions they’d adopted early on. Guys got to lead the way into their old cities like heroes rather than castoffs.

Holts knocks shoulders with P.K. and grabs him by the neck to shake him playfully. “Give the guy a break. Not all of us can be as in touch with our feelings as you are.”

Which was true, though Holts had been red-eyed and off his rhythm after the end of his own tribute.

As he steps off the plane, a sudden, dull throb presses at the base of his skull. It’s all too reminiscent of those first days after the concussion or whatever it was that he’d let a doctor do to him. The bus takes them directly to the arena, and though he must have followed this route hundreds of times over his nine seasons with the Avs, it’s like seeing a city through frosted glass, recognizable but not quite familiar.

His video runs between the first and second period--highlight after highlight that are significant enough that they should be lodged in his brain. He should remember this, the way he and Nate kept finding each other on the ice for goal after goal, the way they’d slam their bodies against each other in celebration. And then he’s singing--or at least saying he won’t only to do it anyways--and the dull ache transforms into a sharp pull towards the Avalanche bench. He locks eyes with their captain, blinks, looks away.

He doesn’t miss this. He doesn’t know to miss it.

After the game, he loiters outside the visitors locker room until Nate comes to grab him. He thinks it’s weird that Nate didn’t just have him go to their locker room until they show up at the bar and half of the guys aren’t there. Not Mikko or JT. Not the hot blonde captain, Landeskog. Not even EJ who’d been sitting with a bunch of other partners in the stands. 

It makes sense that Landeskog didn’t show up. They can’t have been close since he’d made so little an impression, but he and EJ are definitely friends. There are photos of him in Tyson’s house, on his fucking wall next to pictures with Veebs and Jamie. He half remembers backyard barbecues and summer trips to the Kentucky Derby, and even if he didn’t, he’s Nate’s boyfriend, and Tyson would have made it his business to be close to his best friend’s boyfriend.

Gruby buys the first round, Nate the second, and by the time Tyson goes to the bar to get the third, he’s starting to think the other guys might have had the right idea. It’s awkward in a way he doesn’t remember it ever being with these guys. Nate tries to keep the conversation about Seattle, but there’s no common ground here, and they can’t help but go back to a time they were friends in the present tense. They’re still friends, wouldn’t have shown up if they weren’t, but it’s a passive thing, like someone had gone in with a surgical knife and carved out everything of substance except the feeling of belonging.

“Y’know they still call me Tyson Jr. in the locker room,” Josty says, leaning against the bar while they wait for the bartender to finish serving a group of women at the other end. It’s a good look: the lopsided grin, his arms stretching against his biceps as he crosses them over his chest. He knows he looks good, and isn’t that just exactly what Tyson usually goes for. How had he never noticed?

“Yeah?” Tyson says. That’s probably another thing he should know the story behind. The night has been full of them: a Christmas party at Tyson’s when Kerf had to borrow an ugly sweater and Josty had gotten drunk off of two peppermint schnapps concoctions Colin had been slinging, last year’s pre-season barbecue at EJ’s when Tyson had tripped over Cox and into the doggy pool, Nate’s unfortunate attempt at the Ludacris verse of ‘Yeah!’ during team karaoke. He laughs along with the stories, but it’s secondhand enjoyment rather than nostalgia.

“Yeah,” Josty confirms. He turns to the bartender and grins up at him with the full force of his eyelashes before leaning in to knock his and Tyson’s hips together. Tyson knows that move. He’d perfected it in Kelowna with Schenner. “JT will come around. They all will.” He frowns, momentarily distracted by rattling off the correct beer orders of his teammates, but he’s back to smiling again when he turns back to Tyson. “Doesn’t matter where you go, you’re always gonna be one of our guys.”

“Soft,” Tyson teases, not flirting, but not  _ not _ flirting either. It’s a comfortable shorthand he thinks they might have had together.

The light in Josty’s eyes as he cocks a perfectly shaped eyebrow confirms it. “You like that, though.”

Heat moves from the back of Tyson’s neck all the way to the tips of his ears, and his tongue feels heavy, so he wiggles a hand back and forth and manages to croak a flustered, “Medium,” before swooping in to collect the beers for the table.

He spends the rest of the night two steps behind, but the guys don’t seem to notice, or at least are kind enough to play along. It’s nice, really, to hear about the things in his own life that he’s missed, to know that there’s a reason that these people he seems to care for so deeply have left that kind of impression. When they part ways outside the bar later that night, it feels a lot like they’re finally going in the same direction.

 

The pounding on his door starts some time after two. He’s startled awake, torn from a very realistic dream involving a warm mouth and strong hands that he’d very much like to get back to. Whichever one of his drunk ass teammates thought visiting him in the middle of the night is definitely not getting a Tyson Barrie Cookie Box ever again. But Tyson hasn’t forgotten hotel etiquette, so he drags himself out of bed, pulls on his slippers, and yanks open the door to deal with his bedtime nemesis.

Only when he opens the door it’s Nate’s hot captain who stumbles head first into Tyson’s room. The one who hadn’t gone out with them after the game. The one who didn’t even register after nearly a decade of sharing the ice together.

He steadies himself with shaking hands on Tyson’s shoulders, then tips face first into Tyson’s neck. The smell of Landeskog’s shampoo hits like a crosscheck on the numbers. There’s something about it that niggles at the back of Tyson’s memory, happy and safe, and he scrabbles to catch it before it’s gone again, but Landeskog’s giant head plunks heavily on his shoulder, and he has to sway just to keep them upright.

“I can’t believe you fucking erased me,” Landeskog says, voice hollow, like he’s said it a dozen times before. Like it used to be angry. Like at one point he couldn’t believe it but had resigned himself to the truth a long time ago.

The words seem to bring him back, and when he straightens Tyson notices the tears and recognizes the same sudden flash of fire in his eyes that he’d gotten during the game when Seattle had pulled a goal ahead off a Tyson assist.

“You let me love you,” he continues, voice raising now, and Tyson wants to tell him to be quiet so everyone staying on this floor won’t hear, but he’s afraid to move. Afraid that this is what’s missing. “You’re not supposed to turn that into a weapon.”

He’s crying now, not the pretty kind that guys as hot as him are supposed to do, but a full on ugly cry that transforms his face into something wounded and sloppy. Tyson’s not sure what to do with it. Manfully clasp his shoulder? Tell him it will be alright? He must have done these things, caused this man to look like this, but he doesn’t remember. It’s like those wounds are a truth from someone else’s story.

“You ruined everything,” he manages, voice cracking on the last syllable, still so loud in the quiet calm of the hotel. “I thought we were playing the long game, y’know? Building some kind of future. Seattle was supposed to be a pause button so we didn’t spend the whole year missing each other, but you gave up on everything. Gave up on us.”

Tyson feels sick, like his guts are going to crawl out of his mouth at any moment. His head hasn’t felt this badly in months, a million synapses grasping for a connection that isn’t there. He lets go of Landeskog and lets him teeter on his feet while Tyson sinks to the bed, shutting his eyes and trying to shut everything out but his breathing. Gabe follows seconds later, sliding all the way to the floor in a clumsy heap. 

“C’mon Gabe,” a new voice prods gently. Tyson opens his eyes, the nausea receding as he watches EJ pull Landeskog up by the armpits and back on two feet. He cups Landeskog’s face in two big hands, leaning down until their foreheads touch. “It’s over, okay. Give him the box and then I’ll get you home.”

“I don’t have a home,” Landeskog insists, clutching at EJ’s forearms.

“You do,” EJ says, eyes drifting shut. “He doesn’t get to take that away. It’s yours.”

Landeskog nods his head minutely, and takes a deep breath and another before releasing EJ and stumbling out the door.

At first, Tyson thinks that’s it, but he reappears a moment later clutching a box tightly to his chest. He stares down at it like he’s not sure he wants to relinquish what’s inside, but a beat later he’s shoving it into Tyson’s unwilling hands and retreating to the safety of EJ’s side. He looks small in comparison, and Tyson can’t tell if it’s Landeskog’s grief that shrinks him or EJ’s fury that makes him seem large. It doesn’t much matter.

When Landeskog--Gabe--finally looks at him, Tyson does him the courtesy of looking back, and the empty drop feels worse than recognition would. “I’m gonna spend forever missing you,” he says wetly. “And you’re not gonna miss me at all. How is that right?” 

Tyson doesn’t have an answer, so he says nothing.

He listens numbly to EJ telling Landeskog to meet him down in the lobby and wishes he could sleep. He’s so tired and his head hurts so, so much from all the connections he’s tried and failed to make tonight. 

“You fucked him up so bad,” EJ says, voice quiet with fury. It takes Tyson a minute to even realize he’s speaking to him, but once he does it ignites something that none of Gabe’s pain or grief could.

“I can’t remember half the things Nate tells me we did together. My fucking best friend!” Tyson hisses, sharp and low. “He’s the most important person I’ve got and I have nothing to back it up but some half-baked memories from eight years ago.” 

Tyson drags himself up to standing and squares himself up to his full height. It’s a futile attempt at posturing, and EJ must know it because he doesn’t even bother to respond, just glowers down at Tyson. How dare EJ blame him for something that had nearly cost Tyson everything worth having.

“He must have fucked me up pretty badly if I was willing to do this to myself.”

That seems to puncture what remains of EJ’s anger. Tyson certainly wilts with the realization that if the headaches and holes in his history were the better option, then whatever had happened between he and Gabe might not be worth remembering.

EJ rakes his fingers through his hair, and this time when he speaks he can’t control the wobble. “If Nate erased me…” He shoves his tongue under his lower lip and blinks up at the ceiling, huffs out a shaky breath. “It wasn’t gonna be forever, y’know? But this...this is fucking forever.”

Tyson can’t look at him, a feeling close to shame clawing at his chest that doesn’t go away even after the door clicks shut behind EJ. His heart aches for a stranger he once loved and even more for the man Tyson had been when he had loved him. All that they have left between them is the box Gabe had left behind. Tyson doesn’t know Gabe, doesn’t know what terrible things they must have done to each other for Gabe to look how he’d looked and for Tyson to have done what he’d done. He looks at the box and wonders if he could know.

It’s a nice box, one you’d buy to be appreciated, not to be tucked away and forgotten. An ornate G & T is carved into the top, and when he opens the lid even more fine lined detail work covers the inside. A neat stack of white envelopes fill the box nearly to the brim. He flips through them, noting each label, written with painstaking care in his best handwriting.  _ Open when you want to know how much I love you. Open when we haven’t talked in awhile. Open when you’re unsure of the future.  _ Each of them are still sealed shut except one.  _ Open when I’ve hurt you deeply _ .

He doesn’t seriously consider reading it. If he’d had Gabe erased, there must have been a good reason, and even such a direct insight into his psyche in the weeks or months leading up to it weren’t temptation enough to sift through the very relationship he’d needed to get out from under. There had to be other ways to figure out the empty rooms in his head, how his stomach would swoop sometimes for no reason and didn’t have the memories to catch itself as it fell.

He’d told Nate he wasn’t sad any more, and that wasn’t a lie, but if the surgery was supposed to have fixed him, it hadn’t quite worked either. The procedure was supposed to have packed up all the sadness to make room for better things, but it had taken the good stuff along with everything else and left him with too much space. How else could he explain how he felt about his old teammates without the memories to back it up?

When he gets home, he drops his road trip duffel by the door and goes straight for the built-in bookcase in the living room. There’s not much on there--he was never much of a reader as far as he remembers--but there’s an oversized book tucked on the far end next to a few photos of his family that were taken the year Colorado had drafted him. He hadn’t looked at it since the first time he and Nate had gone through it right after the procedure. The migraine that had hit by the second page had made them abandon it, a side effect he’d assumed was part of the concussion, but now he could recognize it for what it was: the result of a brain straining from memories that no longer existed.

This time when he opens the scrapbook to the first page he knows what to expect. He actually remembers the photo of he and Nate in Vail, but the one from the Nuggets game is a complete blank. He thinks he remembers Nate hurting himself at the end of the 14-15 season, but maybe he’s just remembering this photo and the giant boot Nate’s wearing from when they’d started looking through the scrapbook last time.

The headache hits three quarters of the way through. It’s another photo he can’t place: a group of the Avs on the ice, sticks raised in salute to the fans.  _ The most important game 82 until the next year. _

He closes the scrapbook. His head can’t take much more tonight, so he pops four Ibuprofen and throws himself on the bed still dressed in his game day suit. It’d probably be fine in the morning.

 

_ Tell me about game 82, _ he texts Nate when he wakes up. It’s only seven on an off day, but Nate had the benefit of driving home after last night’s game along with the hour time difference, so it’s not fine worthy.

_ Which one?  _ he gets back less than an hour later. He got out of bed to change into his softest joggers and a threadbare Lake Erie Monsters t-shirt half an hour ago only to crawl back in with his phone immediately after. He’d talked himself into and out of googling himself at least fourteen times already.

_ The first one. _

Ellipses appear immediately, then disappear again. He waits, not wanting to leave the app in case Nate’s hesitation means anything. He’s so engrossed with messenger that he jumps when his phone rings. He moves to dismiss the call before recognizing Nate’s picture and immediately picks up.

“Hey buddy,” Tyson greets.

“Hey,” Nate says. He hesitates, like he’s not sure he should have called. “This okay?”

Tyson grins, and he doesn’t mean it, but he can tell Nate needs to see it anyway. “Of course. Figures you’d already miss my face.”

Nate returns the smile, but it’s something so much softer than anything he remembers seeing in person for a long time. “It’s a good face.”

Nate just looks at him for a long moment, trying to read something that isn't there. It must be hard for Nate to see the same person from before but know it’s actually someone different. “So game 82,” he prods.

“Right,” Nate says, and he falls into the story--how impossible the playoffs had seemed at the beginning of the year, how they had finally clicked and gone into a late season tear that had come together in the very last possible moment. “Sammy had a rocket in the first, and you came out in the second with a beauty from just inside the blue line.”

“I scored.” Tyson says. He likes to know he’s the kind of guy who showed up in big moments.

“Yeah, bud,” Nate agrees. “They tried to challenge for offsides but it was all yours.”

“Nice.”

Tyson imagines what that would have been like. How it would have felt to put them up by two in the first. He imagines watching the Blues get one in only for Nate to come back and match it minutes later, watching the puck slide off of Gabe’s stick and into the empty net in the closing moments of the game knowing they were going to the Stanley Cup Playoffs after giving the worst showing of the Salary Cap Era the year before. “What did it feel like?” he asks.

Nate frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I--” Tyson hesitates. “I don’t remember the game.” The words force themselves out, sharp like glass in his throat, and knowing it had hurt, but admitting it outloud felt like a special kind of punishment.

“Right,” Nate says, his voice coming from somewhere far off, and Tyson can’t tell if that’s because of him or Tyson. “ It felt like a miracle, like we’d exorcised whatever demons had haunted us the year before. It was the kind of pure joy you can only experience after going through hell and dragging each other through to the other side . And we went back to your place after because our bodies were all humming on the same wavelength and we couldn’t bear to be anywhere else but with each other.”

“The whole team?” Tyson prods.

Nate shifts on the couch, and Cox takes the opportunity to poke his black nose into frame. Nate huffs like he hates it, but he pats his chest, and the dog easily plasters his body across Nate's so that Nate has to hold the phone at an unflattering angle. “The four of us: you and Gabe and me and EJ. That was the night me and EJ--”

“Let me stop you,” Tyson interrupts, because forgetting has to come with at least some perks. “That’s a memory I’m happy to surrender to the void.”

“I’m not sure how you could forget,” Nate smirks. “You walked in on us.”

Tyson hangs up.

Nate doesn’t call back, but he does send a final text message Tyson doesn’t bother responding to.  _ You can only blame yourself. You spent six months trying to get us together before it finally happened. _

 

A week passes before their off days align again. “Why does EJ hate me?”

Nate looks over his shoulder like he’s making sure no one’s there even though Nate had already said EJ was in California looking at a horse he was thinking about buying. “You were friends,” Nate says, and Tyson thinks of the photo he has on one of the top shelves of his bookcase of he and EJ barbecuing on someone’s back deck. He wonders if Gabe had been there, if he had taken the picture even, or if the reason Tyson can’t remember it was because he was still thinking of Gabe while he was off doing something else. “But Gabe…” he hesitates, like he’s unsure how Tyson will handle hearing Gabe’s name. They haven’t shied away from it exactly, but it wasn’t as if either of them were particularly interested in tackling the subject of Gabe outright.

“You’re my best friend, y’know?” Nate says, which seems obvious, even if Tyson has a long way to go before he’s earned the title back. “If I’ve gotta take a side, it’s always gonna be yours, even when your side is the one that brings nukes to a fist fight. When Gabe--” Nate cuts himself off, and Tyson can see him working through his next words carefully, not wanting to bring up something that would make things worse. “After what happened last summer, I was so mad at Gabe--so mad--but he’s EJ’s best friend, and part of being that is seeing Gabe’s side.”

It’s hard to hear, but he’s glad Gabe has someone who’s loyal to him like that.

“Do you remember when EJ and I got together?” Nate asks.

Tyson knows this one, even if it is a second-hand memory. “Game 82. You traumatized me in my own home.”

Nate shakes his head. “EJ’s so fucking careful. He’s always worried about fucking up something important. Our friendship. The team dynamic. The asshole didn’t even call me his boyfriend until they’d made the official announcement that he was retiring last year. Years of fucking and living in each other’s pockets, and he still was scared of making a mistake. When you had the procedure it really freaked him out. You don’t remember what the two of you were like but…” he draws his shoulders up to his ears like even the memory makes him feel small. “If you could erase Gabe completely, what was gonna stop me from doing the same thing?”

“Oh,” Tyson whispers, and what else is there for him to say? He’d done this so that he could be happy and hadn’t considered the cost to anyone else. 

A sudden pulsing pain throbs behind his eyes, and he pinches the bridge of his nose to hold it at bay. If he’d hurt EJ enough to make him doubt Nate, to make him look at Tyson the way he had back in November, he couldn’t imagine how much pain Gabe was in. But that was a dangerous territory Tyson couldn’t examine too closely.

“We’re fine,” Nate assures him, then backtracks. “We will be fine.”

 

Over the next few weeks he falls into a google hole and discovers podcasts and twitter feeds and private instagrams that help him piece together who he was before the procedure. He pushes his couch to the far wall and takes down the generic Ikea print Oskar had given him as a joke in order to make room for him to map out his history. He pins up pictures and screenshots and handwritten notes from former teammates sharing their favorite stories from before. Z sends him old instagram stories that he tucks into a folder on his computer along with the other videos he’s gleaned from Nate and the internet. When news gets out that he’s looking for private clips, former teammates spread out across the league come through with videos from all the way back from his first season with the Avs.

And if he’s not actually remembering he’s at least starting to feel a little more whole. Like somehow he can discover a return ticket to the home he’d forgotten. 

He doesn’t ask Gabe. He can’t forget how Gabe had sounded, like he couldn’t bear to have been forgotten by Tyson. 

 

They limp through to the end of the season--not quite the Vegas Golden Knights’ victorious swanning into playoffs--and it’s a relief to be done. Next year they can be conquerors. This year survival was enough.

He takes the train up to Victoria and watches his former team battle through three rounds before a decisive exit at home. The hockey is familiar from the hours of game highlights JT kept dropping in his inbox--first as a joke, and then because Tyson kept asking for more--and he recognizes that look of loss when they lose in overtime, can connect it to flashes of other season ending games when he’d been there to feel it with them.

He gives it a week before telling EJ to pick him up at the airport in four hours. Nate’s already in Cole Harbor with Sid and Andy, and he figures if EJ really doesn’t want to see him then he can get a hotel. EJ had maintained his silent treatment even after Tyson had started reaching out to the guys, and the few stories he’d gotten out of EJ had come through Nate.

For all the icing out, EJ’s still at the airport when he lands, a printed sign with the words  _ Johnson Suites: Mr. T-Bear _ in his hands. He's even drawn a crude teddy bear wearing his jersey, the Sockeyes one, not his old Avs one. He's not smiling, but it's something Tyson can work with.

 

EJ’s place looks exactly like he expected but with enough homemaking touches to know Nate had been smart enough to hire a professional once he’d sold his place.

“God, I can’t believe you and Nate live together,” he says, even though it’s obvious: the pictures of their families mingled together, Nate’s signed Drake jersey next to a box holding EJ's original front teeth, the shoes and jackets lined up by the door like they’ve been there for awhile.

He toes off his shoes and slides them neatly next to the shoe bin. He’s more careful than he normally would be at a friend’s house, and EJ must notice because he says, “Why are you acting like a guest? You don’t have to pretend to have good manners, man. You lived with me when you first got called up, so I know how you are.” He tilts his head, considering Tyson with a weird twist to his lips. “Do you remember that?”

Tyson shrugs. The question was bound to come up, if not about this, then about something else. “Not really.”

“Right.” EJ nods curtly, and it’s not an angry gesture, but Tyson can tell he’s unhappy about the answer even if he’s unsurprised. “Gabe was over a lot, so…” It’s his turn to shrug. What else is there for either of them to add.

A few awkward moments pass as they hover in the small foyer, and Tyson wonders if EJ’s still deciding whether or not he can stay.

“You gonna invite me in, or what?” he asks. “No wonder it took me six months to get you and Nate together. You’ve never made the first move in your life.”

“Some of us don’t consider verbal diarrhea a legitimate flirting method,” EJ says, but it’s enough to get him moving deeper into the house. 

It’s familiar in flashes: the ultra whole food organic ice cream in the back of the freezer, the carefully sorted dog toys in their color coded bins, a couch Tyson is sure he’d worn a groove into that’s perfectly shaped to fit his ass. “You’ve got your pick of bedrooms.” EJ nods toward a hall to his right. “Just avoid the dogs’ room unless you want to be spooned by three eighty pound dogs with boundary issues. You’ll figure it out.”

Tyson tosses his backpack into the first empty room he comes to and has a visceral memory of dumping his gear bag in his bedroom at EJ’s old place. “Emily sent this for you,” EJ says, and Tyson jumps, totally missing the flash drive EJ tosses at him.

“Jesus, warn a guy!” Tyson says. “Nate should put a bell on you.”

“Nate prefers putting other things on me.”

“Sick.” Tyson shoves at EJ with a shoulder, but EJ’s an immovable wall, so he gives up and grabs the flash at their feet.

“Her contribution to your... _ enlightenment _ ,” EJ says, and when Tyson continues to stare at him dumbly explains, “It’s all the stuff that never made it online. You had a pretty high humiliation threshold but she held back some good stuff. Just--” he squeezes the back of his neck. “Save the Gabe video for last, y’know?”

Which. Right. Tyson could do that.

EJ ends up hooking his laptop up to the tv in the living room so they can watch it on the big screen, and they stretch out on the couch with their feet on the ottoman and the dogs sprawled across their laps. It’s funny watching the clips with EJ, who shoots off sly remarks at the screen and is almost as delighted as Tyson is at rediscovering these moments. When Tyson starts warbling “It’s All Coming Back to Me,” EJ side eyes him, “Please tell me that’s not coming back to you.”

Tyson snorts. “Celine is my forever girl, and I will not apologize.”

“You should,” EJ says, absentmindedly scratching behind Maverick’s ears. “I had to listen to that on Pepsivision with my own two ears on more than one occasion.”

After they make it through the first batch of videos, they break for lunch, and EJ takes him on a tour of his old neighborhood, hoping to jog a memory that doesn’t exist anymore. The rookies renting his place are gone for the summer, but when EJ pulls into the driveway, Tyson knows he doesn’t want to go in. It’s familiar is the thing, the last place he remembers living in Denver, and that feels almost as much like a false memory as anything he’s left himself with.

EJ shuts off the car but doesn’t get out. Tyson doesn’t either. “You could stay here if you want, take a look around. I’m sure the boys wouldn’t mind.”

“Trying to get rid of me already?” Tyson chirps weakly, but EJ must sense the truth in because he doesn’t chirp him back..

“Nah, man,” he says. “Stay where you want. I got nothing better to do.”

They sit there in silence, Tyson measuring his next move and EJ waiting for Tyson to do anything. Finally, impatience wins out, and EJ starts the car. 

“I can take you home,” EJ suggests, though he doesn’t shift out of neutral.

“Where’s that?” Tyson asks, a little mean. He doesn’t intend for it to be, but he knows this isn’t it.

“Home,” EJ says again, more deliberate this time. “I talked to Gabe.” Tyson doesn’t like where this is going. “He’s in Sweden all summer with Bea--his sister--” he explains at Tyson’s confusion. “So he said you could go by whenever you wanted. See if you can find whatever it is you’re looking for.”

The car feels suddenly warm. The longer he’s been here the fewer headaches he’s been getting, but he feels the darkness closing in at the periphery of his vision that tells him one is coming. “Just take me back to yours.”

Back at EJ’s he takes some space, which is the nice way of saying he locks himself in the guest room, shuts off all of the lights, and does nothing but breathe for three hours. He falls asleep at some point like a tantruming two year old, which somehow seems more respectable than hiding. When he reemerges, he’s ready to think about Gabe again. If he wants to understand, he can’t keep avoiding all the parts that hurt when he presses against them, maybe especially those parts..

He finds EJ out back leading the dogs through some complicated agility course. He would spend his retirement training his dogs to hop through weave poles and race through tunnels.

“You good?” EJ asks once the dogs have paused their exercise.

“Yeah,” Tyson says. He bounces from foot to foot, full of anxious energy. “I was thinking about putting on the last video.”

Maverick bumps her head against EJ’s hand, and he leans down to pat her side in acknowledgement. “You want me to watch it with you?”

Tyson pictures watching the video with EJ, both of them back on the couch, the room robbed of the easy frivolity of this morning. Maybe if it had been Nate offering he would have said yes, but EJ was Gabe’s friend first--Gabe’s friend best--and he wasn’t sure he wanted to be quite that exposed to a person who would always blame him at least a little.

“No, I think I’d rather--” Tyson starts, not sure where to take his sentence that didn’t ruin whatever tentative progress they’d made at rebuilding their friendship.

“Cool cool cool,” EJ cuts in. “I didn’t really sign up to have an emotion today, so we’re good. Just holler when you’re ready for dinner or whatever.” 

Tyson opts for his laptop over the big screen this time. He knows he doesn’t want whatever this ends up being in high definition, so he curls up onto the couch, computer in his lap, and presses play.

According to his doctor, if Tyson had bothered to ask, watching the footage is a mistake. He’s dug too deeply into something he had intentionally forgotten, so now he can have neither his memories nor the clear conscience that comes with wiping the slate clean. 

He can’t unsee the way he looked at Gabe like he was more than a thousand wishes on every shooting star could have offered, can’t unknow what ‘I love you’ sounds like on Gabe’s lips. This whole time he’d thought he knew what regret felt like, but this--laughter trapped between their two mouths caught in a kiss, Gabe’s hand trailing lightly down the back of his neck when they pass in a hallway, his cocky grin just before Tyson shoves whip cream in his face-- it’s more than regret. It's knowing he stole this from himself.

Emily has stitched the clips into a manageable storyline: the blatant flirting during interviews and the totally unsubtle first steps into dating (Tyson--on a chair--announcing it across the locker room to whistles and catcalls that mostly came from Gabe), the falling in love and making a life together. It’s not everything. They had something private and only theirs outside of the rink that Emily wouldn’t have captured, but it’s enough to allow his imagination to fill in those blanks.

When the video finally ends, it’s not enough. He wants the cutting room floor, all of the little things that made up their routines together that she wouldn’t even know to look for. More than anything, he wants what’s missing:

An answer.

But there isn’t one. Not in Nate’s photos or Emily’s video. Not even in the letters Tyson had written that last summer he and Gabe had had together.

_ Open when you miss my voice. Open when you’re thirsty a f. Open when you feel like giving up on us. _

He had stopped crying half an hour ago, but his eyes still feel raw when EJ comes in with the dogs. He doesn’t look surprised to see Tyson on the floor, surrounded by letters, just drops onto the couch and slowly slides to the hardwood, careful of his knee. Their shoulders brush, and Tyson lets their bodies sway against each other.

EJ picks up one of the letters, gentler than Tyson can ever remember, and carefully folds it back into its envelope.  _ Open when you’re feeling sick _ . “You didn’t holler.”

“There’s no answer.” The words tear through him. All of the searching and watching and reading had given him snippets into someone else’s life, but it hadn’t given him the one thing he’d been looking for. “Why’d I do it?”

EJ lifts his shoulder in a half shrug, and it looks like his answer costs him something. “I guess it hurt too much to love him.”

 

He watches the video twice more before burying it in the bottom of his suitcase. For a brief moment, he’d let his cursor hover over the delete button, but there was a lot of life in that video, even if it wasn’t his anymore, and maybe someday he’d be able to watch it and feel something other than a profound sense of loss. 

It takes another six days before Tyson asks EJ to take him to Gabe’s house. 

Gabe’s house is almost the opposite of EJ’s, open and uncluttered. It looks unlived in, no shoes by the door or clean dishes in the drying rack. If Tyson lived here there would be. He was always leaving a trail of belongings in his wake: a jacket slung over a kitchen chair, a half drunk glass of water on the coffee table, an open box from his last online order discarded by the couch. He can’t imagine living in a home like this.

Except the book on the coffee table is for “Beautiful British Columbia” and there’s a postcard addressed to both of them hanging on the fridge. Upstairs, there’s specially formulated curly hair shampoo in the shower next to Gabe’s row of products and an Avalanche t-shirt with a number four on the arm in the hamper like *Gabe had done all of his laundry except what he’d worn the night before he’d left.

Tyson runs his fingers along the wood of the dresser, touches photos on the walls, sits on the bed and imagines going to sleep here every night. He waits for some flash of recognition that never comes. This was his home, and the reality of it was so wrapped up in Gabe that there’s nothing left of it in Tyson’s memory. Exploring the rooms, he can tell that he was just as much a part of this place as Gabe is. Even now the remnants of Tyson scattered throughout were an echo in the empty house that spoke to his absence.

 

Tyson spends the summer training in California  and trying to reconcile who he knows himself to be with who he’s learned he was. He’s not sure he quite knows how to untangle those two people. He makes an appointment with Lacuna and asks if the procedure is reversible, but gone is gone and there’s no getting back what he gave them.

In August, there’s the training camp in Vail, and it’s easy to extend his trip an extra week so that he can drive back to Denver with Nate. It’s healthy, he’s been told, not to keep chasing his former life, but while some things are meant to fade with distance and time, replaced by new places and people, his friendship with Nate isn’t one of them.

“Gabe’s back,” Nate offers only after they make it into the Denver city limits. He doesn’t shy away from Gabe stories any more, but it will still take time for him to lose the moment’s hesitation before he mentions him. “I think he’d like to see you while you’re here.”

“It’d be good,” Tyson agrees, and probably even means it.

They meet at a quiet coffee shop, neutral ground for both of them. Gabe’s already waiting when Tyson comes in, two coffees in to-go cups on the table in front of him just in case one of them needs to make a quick escape. He stands when he sees Tyson, catches himself before he leans in for a hug, and offers his hand instead. “God, sorry, that was weird.”

Tyson laughs. Shaking Gabe’s hand does feel foreign, but he’s just as certain that whatever muscle memory told Gabe to do when he saw Tyson would have felt equally wrong. They sit, and Gabe hands Tyson the cardboard box that had been sitting at his feet. “I thought you might want this. It’s mostly just clothes you didn’t think you’d need in Seattle but...I shouldn't keep holding onto it.”

This time, Tyson accepts it more graciously. “I went to your house,” Tyson offers in return. Gabe doesn’t look surprised, more curious than anything. “It’s nice.” That’s not an adequate explanation of what being back in that house had been like, but he’s not sure how to talk to Gabe. What are you supposed to say to a stranger with whom you share a complicated history?

“Are you still in love with me?” Tyson says, and whatever the right thing is, it can’t possibly be that, but Gabe chokes on his coffee and laughs, so maybe all this needed was Tyson saying something ridiculous to get it on track.

Gabe takes another careful sip of his coffee before answering, giving himself time to weigh his words. “I’m in love with the Tyson who loved me back. That’s not you, is it?” He sounds almost hopeful for a second, but they both know that person doesn’t exist any more. 

“Sorry,” Tyson says and wishes it could actually mean anything. He picks at the sleeve of his cup and tries not to look at Gabe directly. Those blue eyes were a killer.

Gabe twists the sleeve on his own cup and shrugs. “This isn’t about you feeling bad, Tys. I never wanted that.” 

“Then what’s it about?”

“EJ said you wanted to know why you did it,” Gabe says, reaching across the table and stilling Tyson’s hands. His fingers are warm against Tyson’s from holding his coffee, but he likes having them there, a steady pressure. “You erased me, so if anyone is gonna know why it’s me.”

The bell above the door rings, and two women enter with their daughter between them. She reminds him a little of Veebs when she was little, only more towheaded.

“After the draft, we took a trip up to Vancouver to hang out with Veebs for a couple weeks and avoid your dad. You’d rented this gorgeous AirBnB right on the water, and when we got there you’d given me the box with your letters and said you wanted to have a good time together instead of letting the prospect of Seattle suck the air out of every room we went into. We always had the best time together.” Gabe pauses, and he’s smiling, but his eyes are wet bright too. 

“I should have talked to you before we left Denver instead of waiting, but I wanted us to end on a high note. Stupid, I guess.” Tyson doesn’t stop himself from reaching over and squeezing Gabe’s hand. Tyson knows what it’s like to carry the blame for something too heavy to shoulder on your own.

“Y’know, I actually thought you’d feel relieved?” Gabe says, incredulous, like he can’t believe how off the mark he’d been. “You were going somewhere new, starting this new life, and I didn’t want you to feel like you had to keep looking back.”

The bell rings again, the little family leaving with their bag of pastries and a tray of drinks. Gabe and Tyson are silent, letting Gabe’s words sit between them. All he’d done for the last many months was look backwards. It was about time he tried looking ahead.

They let the moment slip into a lighter one, and Tyson tells him about Holts’ weirdest pre-game rituals and the best restaurants P.K. has dragged him to so far. He mentions Lindy and how they’ll slip into Swedish sometimes without  noticing until one of the other guys says something. An oddly wistful look sweeps over Gabe’s features before disappearing again.

Soon enough the barista is flipping the closed sign and stacking chairs onto tables. “Guess that’s us,” Gabe says, and Tyson agrees. He unzips his backpack and pulls out the box of letters that had gone with him from Denver and back three times.

“This is yours,” he says. He’d thought about keeping them, had treasured the person who could write such beautiful words to someone he loved, but they weren’t for him, and he couldn’t even say they’d ever belonged to him. “I really loved you.” And if there had ever been any doubt, those letters had wiped any disbelief away.

“Yeah,” Gabe agrees. “He did.” It’s a subtle difference, but a real one. “I hope someday you’ll get to love someone like that too.”

This time they do hug when they go, and it feels like saying goodbye to a friend. He doesn’t want Gabe to be a stranger any more, so when Gabe releases him, he asks, “Can I call you sometime?”

“I don’t know if I want you to have my number,” Gabe says, but it’s wry, and he’s already pulling out his phone. “Are you still gonna act like timezones don’t exist?”

Tyson grins. “Guess you’re just gonna have to wait and find out.”

 

It takes three years and a dozen games between Seattle and Denver before they find themselves alone in Nate’s and EJ’s kitchen, the Stanley Cup somewhere outside, no doubt being filled with more champagne. It stings that this win isn’t his to celebrate, but there’s still time for him and the boys to bring it back to the Emerald City, and he believes in what they’re building there.

“Does this mean you’re finally gonna wife Nate up?” Cale asks. He’s drunk enough that his voice carries across the yard. “What--ow! I’m just saying. Get off me, G.”

“Listen,” comes EJ’s voice, and it’s nearly as loud, though much less drunk. “This is a no marriage household. We believe in living in sin in order to preserve the quality of the sex.”

A chorus of boos follow the pronouncement, and Gabe laughs. “You’d think they’d have figured it out by now.”

He looks so good like this, young and bright, golden.He’s thin from the long grind of the postseason, dark eyed with lack of sleep, but Tyson can’t remember a time Gabe has looked more beautiful, and honestly he always seems to be surpassing himself one way or another so it’s a feat worth some recognition.

From somewhere out back, a cheer erupts along with applause as someone--Timmons probably--shouts, “Chug, chug, chug!”

“Listen to the babies, Gabriel,” Tyson says. “They need their captain to share his wisdom. Just chew it up and spit it into their little bird mouths.”

Gabe’s face scrunches comically. It’s worth it just for the look. “I will not do that.”

Tyson swats his hip and pushes him out the sliding glass door. “Show ‘em how it’s done.”

Though he scoffs before stomping over to the babies, Tyson knows he loves being the Av’s Guy, and as the group of rookies pull him in by both arms, Tyson can’t help but feel fond.

“Gabe says you’re flying over for his cup day in Stockholm,” EJ says, too close, and Tyson jumps.

“Jesus! Wear a fucking bell!” He waits for the obvious joke, but EJ doesn’t make it, just crosses his arms across his chest and puts on his most intimidating scowl. Jokes on him, though. That hasn’t worked in at least two years. 

` “And he met up with you in Oahu for the Bye week…” he adds.

“Yeah and…?” Tyson reaches into the fridge for a fresh beer. If EJ’s working himself up to a shovel talk, he’s not interested.

EJ plucks Tyson’s beer from his hands, pops it open, and takes a swig. “Yeah and nothing,” he says. “I think it’s nice.”

“You think it’s nice,” Tyson repeats skeptically.

“What, do you need it engraved?” EJ asks, holding the beer over his head when Tyson tries making a grab for it. 

“Asshole,” Tyson huffs, going into the fridge for another. And of course the Shock Top is gone. He grabs a Fat Tire instead.

Honestly, not that he’d admit it to EJ, but knowing he approves is kind of nice even if it is unnecessary. It wasn’t like they weren’t telling people they’ve been hanging out, they’ve just let it speak for itself. There was enough pressure from before hanging over them, they didn’t need it from anyone else.

Tyson isn’t the old Tyson, and he’s finally sure he doesn’t want to be. There’s still distance and uncertainty and the possibility that it won’t work out, but that doesn’t seem as scary any more. Or it does, but Gabe is worth the fear of failing.

The afternoon has faded into a comfortable twilight. Only a few final stragglers remain, huddled around the Cup like it  might disappear if they take their eyes off of it for even a second. Nate and EJ are curled together on a deck chair, limbs intertwined. Tyson snaps a photo.

“I want to do this,” he whispers, and he feels Gabe smile against his bare shoulder as he wraps both arms around his waist.

“You think we’ll fuck it up again?” Gabe whispers back. And that’s the risk, risk? They had a proven track record of fucking it up. Not them. They weren’t the same people. This couldn’t be the same relationship, even if they wanted it to be.

Tyson twists in Gabe’s arms so that he can rest his cheek on Gabe’s shoulder. “I wanna try...not the fucking up, but all the other parts.” He runs his fingers through Gabe’s thick beard and presses their foreheads together. “I like you a lot, y’know.”

“Yeah?” Gabe grins like the cocky asshole he is.

“And you like me a lot,” Tyson adds because  _ duh _ .

Gabe tilts his hand from side to side. “Medium.”

Tyson squawks, pulling himself free from Gabe’s arms. “Absolutely not. You like me way more than I like you. Your head’s just way too big to see it.”

Gabe laughs, low and deep, and it turns Tyson’s stomach liquid hot. “I like you the appropriate amount,” Gabe amends.

“Which is a lot.”

Gabe reels Tyson back in with one arm and leans down to capture Tyson’s mouth with his in a scalding kiss. “Which is a lot,” he agrees, breathless.

They are different people; this is a different moment, and they refuse to punish themselves forever for something they can’t undo.

But one thing is the same: they can’t keep a secret for long.

“Get a fucking room, you mutants,” EJ says gruffly. “My boyfriend just won the Stanley Cup and I want to spoon the shit out of him without hearing you touching each other’s faces.”

“Cool,” Tyson says, grabbing Gabe by the hand. “Dibs on your bed.”

“If you fuck in my bed--” EJ starts, but they’re already too far down the hall to hear him.


End file.
